Modem Magic: In Search of Houdini

Houdini's real name was Ehrich Weiss. He was born the son of a rabbi in Budapest, Hungary, in 1874 and was brought to the United States as an infant by his immigrant parents. As a boy, Houdini joined the circus as a trapeze artist, but soon began plying his trade as a small-time magician. Together with his wife, Bess, he played dime museums and medicine shows. With characteristic bravado, he borrowed his stage alias from Jean Eugene Robert Houdin, the famous French magician of the 1800s, and eventually made it his legal name.

Houdini had only been in show business a short time before abandoning his conjuring act in favor of his amazing ability to discard shackles and shrug off chains. It was as an escapologist that he became a headliner in the top vaudeville theaters of America, as well as being an immensely popular attraction in the music halls of Europe. By his own account, Houdini escaped from a potential watery grave (where he had been tossed with manacles on hands and feet) over 2,000 times.

Houdini always maintained that his tricks could be explained in a way that anyone of normal intelligence would be able to understand. He had a thorough knowledge of his subject, never failed to prepare his magic carefully, and kept himself in the finest physical condition. Despite the claims of spiritualists that he...and they...possessed supernatural powers, Houdini vehemently denied this. In fact, he took great pride in exposing the assertions of fraudulent mediums and mystics. It galled him to see the public bilked by such unscrupulous tricksters whose talents, he believed, were vastly inferior to practitioners of "honest magic." Beneath the surface antipathy, however, Houdini had a much more personal reason to despise fake mediums.

Throughout his life, Houdini had been totally and almost fanatically devoted to his mother. Her death in 1913 was such a crushing blow that the magician fainted at the news and it was months before he was able to appear once again on stage. The passage of time never did reconcile him to the loss and he became determined to contact his beloved mother in the world beyond. During the ensuing years, Houdini attended countless seances around the world, but his desperate need to reach his mother was always thwarted.

Houdini wanted very badly to believe, but knew the stratagems of mediumship so well that the faith to do so eluded him. Early in his career, penniless and starving, he had himself served a brief term as a medium to earn a few extra dollars. He had been a sham...and discovered that the mystics he sought out after his mother's death were no better. Eventually, his disappointment turned to rage and he dedicated himself to unmasking the chicanery. Attending seances, more often than not sporting a false beard and mustache, Houdini would observe the meetings anonymously then, when he had gathered enough evidence to expose the charlatan, would leap up, tear off his disguise and announce with dramatic flair, "My name is Houdini...and you are a fraud!" His investigations culminated in a book, "A Magician Among the Spirits," which he published in 1924...he became known as "the scourge of the spiritualist cause."

A victim of his own fame and iron will, Houdini succumbed to peritonitis on Halloween of 1926. He was fifty-two years old. A young man who had heard of Houdini's ability to withstand any blow by hardening his stomach muscles had punched him in the abdomen...Houdini had not been ready. The blows had caused severe internal damage, but Houdini had fiercely ignored the pain for days while his condition worsened. When he finally collapsed and was taken to a hospital, it was far too late.

Houdini had always held the conviction that if anyone could break free of the constraints of the spirit world, he was the man. At the height of his antispiritualist vendetta, he had devised a code with his wife. If he died before her, he swore, he would do everything in his power to deliver a message from the other side. She was to accept no message, he warned, that did not use the code.

Within days of Houdini's death, Bess was besieged by dozen of mediums, all claiming to have made contact with her dead husband, but none could give her a properly coded message. For many years she attended and conducted seances on the anniversary of Houdini's death, hoping against hope that a true message would arrive. Once or twice, she thought her entreaties had been answered, but each proved to be nothing but a hoax. As she neared the end of her own life, Bess was weary of spiritualists and all they represented. "When I go," she told a friend, "I'll be gone for good. I won't even try to come back."

The passing of the years, however, has done little to dampen the "spirits" of those who believe that Houdini might, even now, break his "code" of silence. With the advent of the electronic age, perhaps it was only to be expected that an alternative "channel" would be made available to him, should he choose to use it. As far as I know, Houdini has declined. Maybe that's not so surprising...if he has as much trouble navigating the Worldwide Web as I do, then I sympathize with him in his efforts.

What does surprise me, is that nobody appears to have yet signed on claiming to be the Great Houdini. With all the computer whiz-kids out there, I would have thought somebody might have given that a try. Perhaps they are afraid to be exposed as an imposter and I can't say I blame them. Given Houdini's intense hatred of phonies, I certainly wouldn't want to be the one confronted with an irate presence, as the words furiously fly across the monitor: "My name is Houdini...and you are a fraud!" The "hacker" meets the "hacked." That would be taking "ghostwriting" a bit too far for my taste and you wouldn't see much CyberSpace between my heels and the door of virtual reality!